The heavy guns stayed silent

Posted onJune 3, 2011

[The Economist]

RIGHTS groups had called it an attempt to whitewash war crimes. Many of the delegates who attended this three-day seminar, conducted by Sri Lanka’s army, were of course hoping for something better than that. Its panels were supposed to help teach the world’s counter-insurgency boffins how Sri Lanka’s army defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels while pursuing a “zero civilian-casualty” policy that supposedly forsook the use of heavy weapons. But few of the truly difficult questions were raised, and in the end none were answered.